OS X Mavericks Vs. Yosemite – A UI Elements Comparison

Apple recently announced OS X 10.10 Yosemite for its Mac range of products and released the first beta version of the software for developers. Many have argued that the new OS features nothing more than a few cosmetic changes, but it is indeed those aesthetic tweaks that are the most noticeable about this new OS. Today, we’ll be showing you a comparison of Yosemite’s UI elements versus the corresponding design of the preceeding OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and although the design upgrade isn’t as dramatic as the change from iOS 6 to iOS 7 was in September last year, the comparison really shows how much time Apple’s design team put into the new OS. More below.

You might remember the disastrous release of iOS 6, mainly because of the shortcomings of Apple’s Maps offering. Due to this, Apple parted ways with Scott Forstall, the lead iOS design developer. As a result of Forstall’s departure, Jony Ive took over the roles of lead design chief of both iOS and OS X, and declared an all-out war on skeuomorphic elements.

The result, as seen in iOS 7 and now OS X 10.10 Yosemite, is a flatter, cleaner, and arguably better overall look, and as you’ll see in some of the side-by-side screenshots below, the difference between Yosemite and Mavericks is stark.

Note: In most of the screenshots below, the above image is of OS X Mavericks, while the below one is of OS X Yosemite. In some cases, only one photo of OS X Yosemite has been inserted.

The dock, which has been featured in every version of OS X for a long time now, no longer supports the trademark, frosted glass shelf, but instead sports a completely new design – a translucent that does away with reflections:

The login screen has now been changed, giving an all new cleaner and sleeker look:

A lot of app icons have been updated to match Yosemite’s new design. A lot can been seen in the screenshots below:

Our favorite: The new trash can icon. Craig Federighi made a note of the time they spent refining this particular icon and the effort definitely shows.

Another nice change was the transition from Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue as the system’s default font. It looks nicer but may be a bit difficult for some to read. For me though, I haven’t faced any readability issues until now.

There are also some other minor changes, such as the tweaking of the top system bar, a smaller Apple logo, thinner icons, etc.

The new “flat” design element:

New “happier” Finder icon:

The new folder icon design:

The “Maximize” button has been changed to “Full Screen” in Finder:

New OS X 10.10 Spotlight:

The new Reminders app:

Terminal also has a slight design update:

An example of the new updated design in Finder windows:

There are many, many design changes in OS X, and many aren’t really immediately noticeable to those switching from Mavericks, Mountain Lion or any other recent version of OS X. But we have to say Apple has really paid close attention to every detail in almost every department there is.

Given that OS X has nowhere the same user base that iOS has, and that this was a very-much expected design update, there hasn’t really been much of a reaction to Yosemite. Still, many seem united in the fact that this is a progressive and very much wanted move from Apple.

What do you think of Yosemite’s new design? Mavericks, or Yosemite for you? Be sure to tell us in the comments below.

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82 comments

The bleached out effect makes the Mac environment unusable for some of us. None of the accessibility options help at all. Unless the background white can be changed fundamentally, this is one long time Apple customer (I have both an Apple II and a Mac I in my closet) who will have to abandon Apple. No choice in the matter. Yosemite in this format is unusable.

MAC stood for wonderful aesthetics for decades. Steve was all about paying attention to details (may he rest in peace). Yosemite doesn’t feel like Mac anymore. I have been using it for a bit, and its got wonderful improvements and features, but purely from the design point of view it is butt ugly!

Totally agree! I had recently upgraded from Lion to Mavericks, which I found just AWESOME in terms of aesthetics, so zen and so Apple, but then I upgraded to Yosemite today, and what a sad surprise to find it looks like they went back to kindergarten!

After many many years, feel like I need to divorce Apple Inc. and leave behind. Our ways spreaded away: they want a closer relationship with teenagers and gadget-lovers (rules of commerce). I just need to do my job.

Bad signs came already, few months ago, from new iWork apps – strictly saying — not applications but toys. Now the rest of the system reached that point.

With the 10.10 OSX they offer childish and naive, candy-looking gadget, which I personally find irritating, and looking so, so so… amateurish. Typography sucks, no proportions, no space economy. Visual bugs, glitches and horrible font aliassing on older screens (yosemiters are forced to buy a retina displ., it’s bad!).

At first sight, I thought: “it must be a joke, for sure I installed wrong thing”. Saddly, it appeared correct. I’ve been working with it for two weeks, and gave up. Downgraded to Mavericks. Now I am constantly harassed with all those dialog bxes, proposing upgrading, warning, threatening… Hey, Apple bosses!!! Dont forget it is MY COMPUTER!!! I want to do with it, what I want to. Get off!

The worst thing, is the difficulty of customization. I suppose, I would accept that system if I had possibility to adjust it easily (!). Unfortunatelly, Apple wants everybody follow The Only One direction. So far, the direction was somehow parallel to mine. From now on, its not. Sorry, Apple. So far, your honey on me was the OS. Now it keeps my away.

I already bought a PC laptop (the same power, one fourth of the MacPro’s price), and proceed to install Debian. Let me repeat, I need to work, not to show off in front of kindergarten colleagues.

As a graphic designer, the design changes haven’t made the OS more appealing, elegant or functional. The login splash screen is oddly un-beautiful. Most annoying are bright blue folders and bold-face Helvetica for the Desktop and Finder icon view. Why make these visually glaring? Why choose Helvetica, which is Microsoft-esque (think Arial) and, at body size, looks like a default Web font? Despite its respectable history, Helvetica sets wider, is less graceful, and with its shorter x-height, less legible. Makes me want to find a setting to change it now. Centering URLs in Safari’s address bar quite odd. Major security holes totally missed. Brand evolving or stumbling? Perhaps the latter.

As a graphic designer, perhaps you should work for a children’s book company, as only a chld could see this as an improvement. “Flat design”, in this case, has reached the level of “fad”, as Yosemite abandons the goals of readability and clarity, especially at the smaller sizes. If Apple wants to oversee an inquisition on “skeuomorphic elements”, at least it should not do so at the expense of usability. Even from these few screenshots, I can see the loss of readability in many elements. Some of those ‘flat’ buttons are nearly invisible, and the font change is so dramatically worse that I have to wonder if this thing was tested in front of a real test public – as in: anyone not already indoctrinated into Apple’s current interface dogma.

The Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue change is a pity. While Helvetica Neue is definitely better on screen than the original Helvetica, that typeface was designed when computer screens had not yet invaded our daily life, i.o.w. it was made for printing on paper. Lucida grande is by far more readable in small sizes on screen, and it’s a mistake, imho, to have changed it. The worst thing is that this makes Apple look more and more like some version of Windows. What next? Arial? Ugh!

Tweak this, darken that, a shade here and there, new type face….but one still can barely read the text in the title banner on Safari. Are there no people over fifty that own an Apple computer and wish to read the Safari banner?

I think the new font looks good in the screenshots, but I wonder how it will look when in use on my Mac. Other than that everything else looks great. I’m more interested in the other changes, i.e., software changes than the design changes. Design changes come and go, the software is what really matters to me. I am a Linux guy first and foremost, but I also use Mac OS X a good bit. So I hope they only added to the functioanlity and not taken away from it.

A disaster! The needle has swung too far to the ‘functional’ side of UI design. Yosemite looks like a Fisher-Price “My First Computer” UI. It looks like a mock-up of a UI, rather than the result after the graphic artists have finished.

I thought that very same thing, David! Only then, I realized that Fisher-Price would make a phone durable enough not to bend, haha. ;) Ives design esthetic is such a sad turn of events. I fear that one day, we will either look upon these years as a blemish on the face of Apple, or look upon them as the beginning of their downfall. RIP Steve Jobs.

Yes times change but function dose not (if I want to play a game that is a function and that function will always be the same) So understand this is vital to the design of a GUI. Now look at icons(iconography) there function is to identify somethings with out the need for text. So look at the icon for the “Games Centre” on Mavericks: basically it is a box devised into 4 with a representation of a game in each quadrant a chess pice a dart in a target a rocket and a bat. This makes the icon very easy to understand. Now look for the “Games Centre” icon on Yosemite? Unless you know it you will have a hard time finding it. It’s a collection of coloured bubbles (yes bubbles may be fun but do they represent a collection of games?). They should employ a dyslexic(I am) as we iconography is important to us.

Microsoft just lost its research and development department (Apple). Apple is now steeling ideas from Microsoft, Google, Android, etc. (recycle bin) Apple needs to hire a graphic designer that knows what “High Gamut Colors” are. High Gamut Color are colors that are outside the CMYK printing range. (Kiddy Colors) Yosemite interface was supposed to be in the new version of kids LeapFrog computer.

What a shame that apple has decided to do away with the beautiful interface of Mavericks, and previous OSs. One of the reasons I went to mac was the titanium look the UI sported. the dock is a terrible downgrade form the old one. The light blue folders in the finder seem like the colors are all diluted, characterless in my opinion. Starting to look more and more like crappy windows. I for one will be staying put with 10.10. Sir J.I should stick to designing hardware cuz he truly sucks at designing UI.

I wish I had seen this Article before I upgraded to Yosemite yesterday. I’m already regretting & terribly angry with myself for having not done enough ‘research’ before deciding to upgrade. Something tells me that majority of the users dislike the new ‘Flat’ look & feel. I feel that Yosemite upgrade is actually a downgrade by two generations at least from UI perspective. ‘Terrible’ is an understatement for the new UI. I envy those (lucky users) who decided to stick with Mavericks – I wish I had been one of those !!

Seriously? I think if I or anyone who is unfamiliar with Mac’s were looking at these screen comparisons for the first time they would all (100%) agree the flat design looks like a version 1.0 attempt compared to the evolved and mature look that Maverick gave us. You don’t need a graphics design artist to draw a circle or a box.

Just finished upgrading my MacBook Pro to the new Yosemite and after seeing it for the first time, I felt the same shock and horror I would have felt had I just accidently knocked over a whole mug of coffee all over my laptop!

Ugly beyond belief. Luckily, I upgraded only my work laptop, while my home machines are still sittin’ pretty on Mavericks. Flat design? Whose brilliant idea was that? And yes, we miss you Steve. Wouldn’t have happened on you watch.

Yosemite looks terrible! What the actual f*ck were they thinking? “Oh, let’s delete all the effects around all buttons, logo’s, titles and stuff. What remains will be called as the Yosemite update! It will look just fine!” Well, I definitely hate this update!

Designed by a 5 year old for a 5 year old! Sorry apple, i really think you dropped the ball on this one, your products are beautifully crafted and bought by people who are willing to spend a lot of money on them, why then insult us with a UI that looks like its for children!

I do not see chess in the list of Yosemite apps. Where is Yosemite’s chess app? also, re the new iMac5K, there is an audio output jack but no audio input jack — what’s up with that? Do I now have to buy a 3.5 mm stereo plug to USB adaptor cable to provide input to Garage Band from other than the built-in microphone?

This is the end of Apple computers as we know it. Clearly all designers with knowledge are gone, from every visual perspective this is bad, from ux stand point is terrible, this thing looks worst than ubuntu. I am reinstalling mavericks with dual boot linux mint. This is half job.

Did install now. Excited about the new release blinking in App Store. Now I really wish that I did´t.

Permanently interrupted the installation on the laptop. Really disappointing colors of the folder – annoying color actually, how do I change it??? There should be an option to use Mavericks design which has a more balanced contrast, better fonts, – better a lot and the dock!?!. 0.01 pixel hair lines does´t always work. Please focus on what functional rather than whats possible. Some of this looks almost like the 2006 design. I am not going to throw away my brand new top spec new iMac 27 just because there is a 5k version available since yesterday – and which I don´t have (yet).

Except for that I really appreciate all effort from Apple to make improvements. Keep up the good work – Please; Rewind most of the UI by one generation and open up for options.

I am in an Apple Store right now, it doesn’t take me more than 3 seconds to yell out, “What happened to this MAC!” Then, being very out-of-date, didn’t noticed the 10.10 release, look up this thread in Google and wanted to express, ” THIS IS PLAIN UGLY! “

– Everything is too bright – Most icons are ugly – Toolbar icons on a white rectangle on a light grey titlebar. Really Apple? – our world is colorful, why are most apps in dull grey shades then? To not distract from the more important things? Why did you add transparencies then, to let the background shine thru? – why not let the users adjust the UI fonts and sizes to their needs? – why not let the users adjust the colors of the UI?

I had been using apple products for over 15 years and I loved them. I loved apple products because they were working very fast and because they were looking very nice. The interface on all this products were amazing. Nobody had a nicer and more detailed interface than apple. I used to love to open and use an apple product until they came up with this joke of an interface ugly and fade and very hard to see, first on the iPhone and iPad and now on the mac too. the interface doesn’t stand out in any way than windows, android etc. it is very fade , hard to see and lacks any design. I HATE IT! I upgraded to Yosemite and it change completely the interface. Any other system gives you the option to choose what interface to use, but aplle. Why? BYE APPLE WELCOME LINUX OR UBUNTO FOR HALF THE PRICE. Until apple finds its way back I will spend my money somewhere else.

Hmmm, feels like a lot in the UI has been downgraded just like Microsoft did a few years ago with MsOffice look and feel. Several graphics (like the dock) actually resemble a lot like Elementary or other linux distro’s! Honestly, after reading this page, I’ve decided to stick with Mavericks.

I can not imagine disagreeing with you more on the new flat look of Yosemite. The older look showed a caring for what was designed. It took time and effort to create. It looked great, polished and showed some class. I love Ivy and what he brings to Apple, but this is just awful. It frankly looks like something a third grader might do and with very little effort. Bad Bad Bad

Well, all I can say is that Shujaa Imran, the guy who wrote this bit of trash has absolutely no taste. I think I can say this as having just read the 50 or so comments there are few that agree with him. Yosemite is a disaster. It needs to go away. Now, today.

The shit started from iOS 7. I was afraid to see it coming to MacOS and was a bit settled by Mavericks…Well seems like Mavericks was the last thing that was still affected by Steve Jobs. Now Ivy is ruining everything that Jobs was able to generate during the decades.. and it took just a couple of years. Apple is over for me guys. Sorry to say that, but this is bullshit and I do not believe any designer can say that bloated colours can be used on the screen. that is just total nonsense. It is tiring for the eyes and that is a fact. IOt is not even about likes or dislikes, it is totally dysfunctional… Helvetica as a main font – another nonsense.. I have a feeling no real designer is left at Apple… Cannot imagine such a crap could have been released by a company that was everything about aesthetics… Johnny Ive, I hate you for totally ruining what I loved so much. Cook is just too weak to be able to see what is going on. I totally understand now why they offer Yosemite for free: only a totally blind apple fanatic would have bought it… Time to say – ENOUGH OF CRAP, APPLE!!!!

Puke me a river! My eyes are screaming and i’ve only endured this horrific interface for a few minutes. What happens when i have to look at this for an entire day of work! Why didn’t someone warn us before pressing “Accept”? “Warning: if you are not blind, you will want to gouge your eyes out after installing…”

I could handle the new look to the icons, etc. It’s the font that I’m finding unusable. My eyes hurt!! I don’t have a retina display, maybe that’s the problem and they’ve decided that don’t care about any users without. But I think I’m going to have to roll back. I’m getting a headache.

I open my system preferences just to see some good icons! which brings me to another point… they only changed half the ui to the flat look if you really pay attention because they know its stupid and not usable for most things. how the hell is the ios app store a blank white page with words and where do I sign up to be a graphic designer this flat look is cake!

Going to join the disgruntled few and say I couldn’t possibly find Yosemite less appealing. The stale flatness of the design has drained the OS of all character. The lifeless dock icons, the pastel-coloured palette and absence of shading and textured detail is what’s stopping me from upgrading Mavericks (my opinion’s been based on watching my colleagues use Yosemite; it’s off-putting every time).

It might sound dramatic, but this is my workstation – my livelihood. Not being comfortable in your own workspace has a detrimental impact on efficiency, and I think it violates every UX rule to force a mandatory change of layout upon users without offering them a setting to enable the legacy interface as an alternative. Of course, I’d imagine there’s a myriad of business-related decisions that’ve influenced the mandatory switch in motif, which is why I’ve a sinking suspicion I’ll inevitably switch to Ubuntu or something to continue work as a developer. Obviously this’ll raise issues with program compatibility, considering I also work in graphics and multimedia (I’m a paying subscriber to the full Adobe suite, so… really not sure how that’s gonna carry across. Hrmmm…)

Oh yeah, all this, because of a forced layout change.

This is what bothers me the most: a company deciding what’s best for its users, instead of allowing users to decide what’s best for them.

The “new” look (it’s really a kind of 1950s minimalism) is antithetical to usefulness. For one thing, one must focus to grasp something that should be clear from a glance. I want to focus on the work at hand; once one is familiar with an interface, a glance is all that should be needed to click on the right place. This is not the case with Yosemite.

I once served in the Navy on submarines. At the beginning of my training it all looked overwhelming. By the time I received my Dolphins (i.e., got qualified) I was truly impressed by the people who designed the “interfaces” to the multitude of systems we were required to learn. They were clear and made sense. They worked! I would probably be dead if the designers of the Yosemite interface were the designers of the system interfaces on the boats I served on.

Another thing that bothers me is the one size fits all mentality of the Yosemite designers. Not everyone is prepared to be a submarine sailor. And not every good submarine sailor would be a good Army Ranger, Navy Seal or Marine. The Yosemite interface designers should have studied and learned the variety of ways that people perceive and interact with interfaces and provided options for the user to adapt the interface to their psychology and capabilities.

The Yosemite interface was done by smart people with small minds. What they designed and implemented looks OK in a static sense, that is as something like wallpaper (in its many senses). However as something dynamic and useful it is a failure.

I left windows for mac when I saw Tiger. Never looked back. Having just upgraded to Yosemite I am thinking about moving away from mac. Yosemite reminds me of GNUStep. Everything that brought me from windows, being ease of use, reliability and awesome sex appeal has been abandoned by Apple. My galaxy tab at work is beginning to look very good. If Apple wants to become an uninspiring and drab interface they they can do it with someone else’s dollar support. Yosemite is childish, ugly, boring, uninspiring and just plain nasty when compared to sexy Tiger or Snow Leopard. Why on earth would Apple, a graphics based company with awesome displays, water and dull the interface into something so drab and ugly? This would be like Ducati hiring Russian for their style and graphics design team. Someone named Steve is turning over in his grave.

I honestly thought something was wrong with my display when I first updated to Yosemite. I can’t even see some buttons on youtube because it’s just all white. The interface is hard to look at and it’s hard to find anything because everything is just white everywhere. Terrible idea and I’m thinking about switching back to Windows.

From most of the negative comments I read about Yosemite, I am happy to still be using my Mavericks OS. When reading the posting in this place the person who wrote, “Apple becoming an uninspiring and drab interface” said it correctly. On my network I have two PC’s and my iMac. If Yosemite can’t come back and return it’s interface to the former sharp, pristine, top of the line viewing experience I will simplely keep my iMac and it’s Mavericks OS until it is not productive. Then fall back on MS and possibly try and use the iMac with another OS. Bah-Hum-Bug, hate to see good things go bad.